What’s going on with TellTale Games? Are they shutting down?
It’s been a very rough year for TellTale Games despite starting it out with nothing but optimism and the promise of releasing many games. And now, it’s culminated with TellTale acknowledging that they laid off pretty much all but 25 of their staff.
“Today Telltale Games made the difficult decision to begin a majority studio closure following a year marked by insurmountable challenges,” began their Twitter post. “A majority of the company’s employees were dismissed earlier this morning, with a small group of 25 employees staying on to fulfill the company’s obligations to its board and partners.”
What’s worse is that many of the employees have went onto Twitter and noted that the hard work that they did to try and save the company was not only for naught, but that they weren’t going to get severance pay to cover the hours they worked.
Adding to the intrigue and confusion is that some reports are saying that TellTale Games wasn’t making any money at all off of their titles outside of The Walking Dead and Minecraft: Story Mode. Which makes you wonder how they continued making games in the first place.
A movement online is happening to try and get the now laid-off workers new jobs so that they aren’t in the cold for too long. But given everything that’s happened, and word that all but two of their projects have been canceled, the future is not bright for the company.
Well, darn.
Even though none of their recent games peaked my interest, and the fact that they’re all apparently “bare minimum of interactivity with a storyline that’s always the same” turned me off further, but SBCG4AP, Sam and Max, and Poker Night are all really great games, and I’m sad to see the company that revived the point-and-click adventure game, a seriously underappreciated genre, shutting down.
Hopefully the devs can find employment elsewhere and maybe another company down the line will keep adventure games alive.